By Alex L. Goldfayn

January 09, 2007

Talk about a big freaking deal. Today, years of intense, breathless rumors -- first on blogs and then in the mainstream media -- finally proved true when Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, announced the company's first mobile phone.

Called the iPhone, this baby is sleek, slender and incredibly sexy. Functionally, it sounds almost too good to be true:

Note that the picture at right hardly has any buttons. That's because they're all on the screen. It's a "multi-touch" display, meaning you can hold down shift with one finger, and the letter you're typing with another -- on the screen!

And I did say "finger." No stylus here. “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device—our fingers," Jobs said during his keynote at the San Francisco-based MacWorld conference. "And
iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since
the mouse.”

There's even a built-in sensor that disables the touch-screen when you're holding it up to your ear, so you don't accidentally push buttons.

The phone will be sold in two models: a 4-gigabyte version for $499 and an 8-gigabyte model for $599. It will be sold through Cingular only...at first.

Release date: June, 2007.

If you read my work or listen to my radio show, you know that I focus on products that matter for us consumers. If it's "not for most people," I say so. In fact, I say so quite often while covering new technology. I said it for many of the products I saw at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (think freaky detached robotic Elvis head that talks and blinks...really).

But this iPhone, it's for most people. It's for us. It's made by Apple, which means it'll be a joy to use. And it will do what it does -- everything, apparently -- very elegantly.

That said, a single product that does so much is bound to have faults. And this is a new device, which means there will be bugs to work out. Most new Apple products have to have kinks worked out in their early weeks on the market.

It's also quite expensive. This is a lot of money for most consumers to spend on a phone. Sure, it's not much more than a phone plus an iPod, but most people who want both products probably have them already.

Still, a single product from a single company has stolen the thunder from the entire consumer electronics industry's big event.

Remember when the metal-necked iMac desktop computer made the cover of Time Magazine during wartime? Watch your national magazine covers this week and next.